Rupert Murdoch Remarks Secretly Recorded

By Jeanne Whalen

Rupert Murdoch delivers a speech on Oct. 14, 2011, at the National Summit on Education Reform in San Francisco.

Associated Press

LONDON—News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch was secretly recorded playing down the significance of wrongdoing at his U.K. newspapers, remarks that sharply contrast with his public contrition over the papers’ alleged use of illegal reporting tactics, and criticizing a police investigation as “totally incompetent.”

Britain’s Channel 4 News and the journalism website Exaro News posted excerpts of the recording online, saying it was made in March during a meeting with journalists at The Sun tabloid, some of whom had been arrested by police probing allegations of the media bribing public officials for information. Since 2011 police also have been investigating the illegal interception of voice-mail messages and emails by journalists seeking information. Dozens of News Corp journalists have been arrested in the probes and some charged with crimes, including alleged phone-hacking and “conspiring to commit misconduct in public office” by allegedly paying officials for information.

On the recording, Mr. Murdoch is heard saying of the police investigation: “I mean, it’s a disgrace. Here we are two years later and the cops are totally incompetent.” He later adds: “It’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing.”

At one point, Mr. Murdoch also says: “I don’t know of anybody, or anything, that did anything that wasn’t being done across Fleet Street and wasn’t the culture. And we’re being picked on.”

In public appearances before a parliamentary committee and a judge-led inquiry probing the scandal in recent years, Mr. Murdoch has apologized profusely for any wrongdoing at his papers.

“Invading people’s privacy by listening to their voice mail is wrong. Paying police officers for information is wrong,” he told the parliamentary committee in July 2011. “This is why News International is cooperating fully with the police, whose job it is to see that justice is done.”

On the recording of the March meeting, Mr. Murdoch appears to take a different tone. “We’re talking about payments for news tips from cops. That’s been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn’t instigate it.”

A News Corp spokeswoman declined to make Mr. Murdoch available to comment Thursday. In an emailed statement, the company said: “No other company has done as much to identify what went wrong, compensate the victims, and ensure the same mistakes do not happen again.” The statement adds: “Rupert Murdoch has shown understandable empathy with the staff and families affected and will assume they are innocent until and unless proven guilty.”

News Corp added: “Mr. Murdoch never knew of payments made by Sun staff to police before News Corporation disclosed that to U.K. authorities. Furthermore, he never said he knew of payments. It’s absolutely false to suggest otherwise.”

News Corp also owns The Wall Street Journal.

The satirical magazine Private Eye first reported the existence of the recording in June.

On the tape, Mr. Murdoch also appears to apologize for his initial reaction to the scandal in the summer of 2011, which included closing the company’s News of the World tabloid.

“We were working in the belief—I think rightly—the police were about to invade this building and take all the computers out the way, and just put us out of business totally,” he says. “If you want to accuse me of a certain amount of panic, there’s some truth in that,” he says. “But it was…I was under personal siege…all the press were screaming and yelling, and we might have gone too far in protecting ourselves, and you were the victims.”

Asked by one journalist why News Corp handed so much evidence connected to Sun reporters to police, who initially were focused on investigating News of the World practices, Mr. Murdoch called it a “mistake.”

“But, in that atmosphere, at that time, we said, ‘Look, we are an open book, we will show you everything.’ And the lawyers just got rich going through millions of emails.”